Free Baseball Not Friendly To Phils

There is indeed something special about these Washington Nationals. They remind me a lot of the Phillies when they finally gave into the call for the youngsters. The Phillies fought back all night but ultimately fell short 4-3 in the 11th inning.

Strasburg’ed – Hunter Pence homered off Stephen Strasburg in the fourth inning to give the Phillies a 2-0 lead. It was the first home run given up by Strasburg since August 2010. Carlos Ruiz, who has been on an absolute tear, also took the righty deep in the fifth inning. Ruiz’s fifth home run of the year gave the Phillies a 3-1 lead.

KK – Kyle Kendrick, making another start in place of injured Cliff Lee, pitched very efficiently for five innings of work. He allowed only one run on seven hits and struck out two. The radar gun had him topping our at 94 tonight. But then again it says Nats reliever Henry Rodriguez was hitting triple digits, so who knows.

Bully-pen – By no means do I think managing a baseball team is easy, especially when the big guy Charlie Manuel gets tossed in the first, but it boggles my mind that Jonathan Papelbon wasn’t brought in for six outs to close this game out.

Small Ball No More – The Phillies tried reliving their glory days tonight by relying on the long ball. As you can see, it did not work. Two of their six hits left the yard but only accounted for three runs. On a positive noted, Ruiz has 13 hits in his last six ball games. He is now hitting over .330 for the season.

Trading Places – The Phillies and Nationals have swapped roles thus far in the season with Washington sitting atop the NL East and the Phils bringing up the rear just surviving enough to stay ahead of the LOLMets.

Take Back the Park – Philly fans will be able to invade the Nation’s capital for two more days. Hopefully the Phillies can win out before heading back to Philadelphia.

I get that Pap will not pitch 2 innings but was KK over 90 pitches why no pitch the 6th not like he going to start again and really there was no one else to pitch Swimmer for 3 innings when he barely got out of the two he pitched terrible umpiring yes balls and strikes where different from batter to batter Stausburg got 2 inches off the plate KK did not get a corner and depending on the count. And can somebody tell the young pitchers to throw strikes. Why not Badtardo for another inning he didnt throw a ton of pitches just on frustrating game and one more thing even though he was safe no way Vic should even running

Keep your mind boggling Kieran. They will never use the 50 Milion dollar man in a high leverage situation, nor will they ever use him for more than four outs. More likely never more than three. They’d rather have Ross Geller pitching to Bryce Harper in high leverage situations.

Well then it looks like they won’t be using Papelbon at all if they wait for just 4 outs. Hi profile, big bux’s and nothing to show for it yet. As for the umping they are a total disgrace to baseball and it shouldn’t be allowed especially the way things are today. No consistency to say the least.
It seems to me like RA messed up the chem. of this team totally.

The Nats fans are the worst, they peeve me. They only drew 22,000 for Bryce Harper’s debut, they can’t out draw the Philllies fans at their own park without spending millions on a “take back the park” advertising promotional campaign and spreading “Natittude Park” Banners everywhere to cover up “Nationals Park”. And they still can’t keep us out. What a terrible fan base, completely undeserving of good baseball. The only time they go over 30,000 is if the Phillies , Yankees, or Boston are in town.

i don’t think schimmer pitched that bad! he was up to close to 60 pitches! my god what were the coaches thinking? we got at least 3 bad calls. the check swing, the ball over the bag by chooch called fowl, and the non tag on vic at third. the harper so called check didn’t hurt but the other two cost us the 4th run, which ultimately cost us the game! no wonder the nats were so happy at the end of the game. they knew they lost but in their eyes fate won it for them. to me that’s more scary because now in their minds they have the mojo. but their ace went agaist our 6th best starter and we should have won so take solice in that my freind.

Actually Lefty, of the Nats’ 17 wins, only 9 were by 1 run. And of their 9 losses, 5 were by 1 run. That means that the proportion of 1-run losses to overall losses (5/9) is greater (though just barely) than the proportion of 1-run wins to overall wins (9/17). Don’t hold your breath waiting for that “luck” to run out.

I was just going on what the Nationals announcers said last night. Can’t get the Philadelphia feed here near Baltimore. I like your handle, I remember the old saying from when I was a kid- First in War, First in Peace, last in the American League.

Not surprised they said that. MASN is a pretty amateurish production that we have to stomach night-in, night-out.
I like the handle, too, but more for it’s updated saying: First in the National League East.

Best of luck today. Here’s hoping for a memorable season series (and finally a competitive one).

You can’t expect Schwimer to succeed in that situation. He throws pretty fast but his ball lacks movement and his breaking stuff very often doesn’t really break. Harper should have bashed that “cut fastball” (that was actually a hanging breaking ball) out of the ball bark last night. His stuff isn’t that good so he nibbles. And then walks guys. And then stuff happens to him like it did last night.